Untold Tales of the Self: the Ineffable in Early-Modern Jain Poetry

Abstract

Jain ādhyātmik (spiritual, mystical) poets from the 17th to 19th centuries (e.g., Banārasīdās, Ānandghan, Cidānanda) elaborated a category of ineffability to discuss the pure experience of the soul or self (ātma-anubhava). These early-modern Jain poets mobilized a very specific understanding of the ineffable, one that resists language and logocentrism as sources of delusion and conflict. The focus on the ineffable in this poetry is always attended by a set of terms that qualify the ādhyātmik view. These are a privileging of the neutral (samatā), experience (anubhava), and on the other hand, a demotion of opinion, partisanship, doctrinarism, and bigotry (matawālā, mata-arthi, mata-jaṅgī). This paper will show that a shared constellation of terms, intertextuality, and a rejection of partisanship and logocentrism bound a group of Jain poets from the 17th to 19th centuries to a particular endorsement and understanding of ineffability; one which was authorized and emboldened by an engagement with Jain philosophical plurality and non-absolutism. The poetry exhibits a frequent co-occurrence of ādhyātmik anubhava with the Jain the epistemological system known as saptabhaṅgī (Jain seven-valued predications), of which avaktavya (sometimes translated as ineffable or non-assertable) is a prominent aspect. The association philosophically grounds ādhyātmik positions and reinforces their assertion that some aspects of reality, namely ātma-anubhava, are ineffable and beyond the realm of phenomenal predication.